Tanner Richard netted his first goal of the season and the next two followed quickly.

The Crunch center rushed down on a 2-on-1, pulled up to avoid a sprawling defenseman and buried the puck over the goalie’s shoulder. Richard’s goal with 24 seconds remaining capped his first career hat trick, as Syracuse routed the Rochester Americans, 7-2, at the Onondaga County War Memorial Saturday.

“The puck was in the neutral zone and (Michael) Bournival set up a perfect trap for them, and then (Erik) Condra kind of touched it to me,” Richard said. “I wanted to go backdoor all the way — I think everyone in the building knew that — and the D-man slid to take it away, so I figured I may as well take a shot.”

Tanner Richard, Yanni Gourde, and Matthew Peca were the game's three stars. All hail Tanner Richard, your Dark Swiss Overlord of Garbage Time Hat Tricks. After a less than stellar training camp and difficult start to the season. Richard now has points in consecutive games and hopefully will take off from here. Also good to see youngsters like Peca and Adam Erne find the scoresheet. This is a veteran dominated team, but these talented youngsters are the ones who are going to push this team over the top. Also, congratulations to defenseman Dominik Masin on his first pro point.

Tampa Bay fell behind early and never crawled back into the game. The effort wasn't bad, necessarily, but you can't spot good teams two goal leads and expect to win. And, frankly, the Lightning have not been themselves 5 on 5 so far this year from a possession standpoint. The problem with the inconsistency is that the Lightning have put themselves in a position where they need to get 7 of a possible 10 points on this upcoming 5 game road trip just to stay on track for the playoffs by the 12 points in every 10 games formula. That's a bad spot to be in, and the Lightning really needed to get at least a point out of this game.

The K-Wings scoreless drought has now reached 194:55 after three consecutive 3-0 shutouts. Nic Riopel allowed just two goals, but the only place the K-Wings offense can be found is on the side of a milk carton. Bolt prospect Brian Hart was back in the lineup after being scratched Wednesday night and responded with a team-high 5 shots. Also back in the lineup for Kalamazoo fresh after being reassigned by Syracuse was defenseman Adam Comrie. Kalamazoo completes its 3-game home stand Saturday night against the Mallards from the Quad Cities.

The Syracuse Crunch rallied to earn one point, but couldn’t nab the second.

The Crunch registered two goals in the final 3:51 of regulation to send the game to overtime, but the Bridgeport Sound Tigers prevailed, 3-2, in a shootout at the Onondaga County War Memorial Friday.

“You can’t expect to win when you work five minutes in a game,” Crunch head coach Benoit Groulx said. “I thought our forwards didn’t compete hard tonight, they didn’t skate. It’s disappointing obviously. We left a point on the table.”

Nikita Gusev had a Third Period garbage time goal in SKA's 4-0 win over Podolsk. He played 17:12 in the victory, and remains in third in the KHL in scoring. Rangers draft pick Igor Shestyorkin stopped all 20 shots he faced for the shutout.